Tools: Maps and Diagrams

Understanding how external media such as maps and diagrams influence spatial learning and reasoning is crucial to improving spatial learning and to education. Maps and charts highlight spatial relations that can be difficult, and at times impossible, to perceive on the basis of direct experience. For example, by looking at a map, one could easily see the relative spatial position of several cities across the United States. This information would be very difficult to acquire directly from travel or to describe in words. The unique perspective and scale of maps make perceptible, and cognitively tractable, spatial relations that might otherwise remain opaque. Thus maps can affect cognition and contribute to its development.

Furthermore, maps, charts, and diagrams are critically important to STEM education. Learning in geoscience, for example, depends on students’ ability to understand and use complex maps that represent three-dimensional topography. To facilitate students' learning, we need to understand the challenges of learning from maps and other spatial representations.

The goals of our research on Maps and Diagrams are:

To understand how the use of maps, charts, and diagrams contribute to spatial cognition and its development.

To shed light on the process of understanding and learning from maps, using SILC's theoretical perspective and methodological tools, including gesture, analogy, and CogSketch.

To determine how research on the spatial cognition and malleability contribute to understanding and enhancing the use of maps and diagrams in STEM education.